Fisher Classic Forum

I enjoy the 1270, but the weight is bothersome. The eight inch coil alone weighs more then the rest of the detector with batteries inserted. Is there a lighter after market coil for this detector. I have the 7 inch elliptical, nice balance and easy to swing, but looking for a larger, lighter coil to swing.

QuoteHappy_Hour
I enjoy the 1270, but the weight is bothersome. The eight inch coil alone weighs more then the rest of the detector with batteries inserted. Is there a lighter after market coil for this detector. I have the 7 inch elliptical, nice balance and easy to swing, but looking for a larger, lighter coil to swing.

I know the 1270 will use any coil that will work on a 1266! (1265 coils or older don't work)
If coil weight is an issue, then the one coil you don't want is the resin filled (solid) (rare) 5"X 10"

The 1266 5" round box coil is NICE to swing on the 1270! but your going down in size.
I doubt that your going to find a lighter coil than that open frame OEM 8"

Another solution to a weight problem or fatigue is you can easily make a detector sling that can be adjusted to take most of the weight from your arm and shoulder.
You just need a strap off from something like a sports bag, a bungee cord, and a few nylon ties.

Take two of nylon ties and make a loop out of one and attach it to the detector shaft somewhere about the grip area with the second nylon tie.

Then attach the bungee cord to the one end of the sport bag strap.
To adjust its length just pull one end of the bungee through its hook end, cut off what you don't need, then fold the end of it over and wrap a nylon tie around it and pull it back into the hook (doubled its to large to pull completely through)
See attached pictures for the rest of the rig.
And remember if you only put 1Lb of weight on the shoulder strap you lessened the load on your arm by near half!

I used one for awhile,I couldn't handle the weight of it,if Fisher
Would of made it lighter and put a manual ground balance on
It,I would be swinging one today,It was a hot unit,especially on
Relics,just to heavy

Greetings, MarkCZ, I like your sling idea for the 1270. The machine has some impressive features and performance qualities that endeared me right away. But swing ergonomics aint cuttin' it! I tried strapping a couple of 9 volt batteries to the rear arm stand, but that just added more weight & didn't seem to improve balance like I thought it might. Furthermore, I'm wondering if you could provide any tips concerning the"iron disc" mode. Like: what numerals on the iron disc knob accomplish what? I'm not much of a relic hunter, but would still like to know what's going on in th ground while in that mode. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Duck!

This MarkCZ's brother and came up with the sling idea and gave both of my brothers a basic sling. Neither of them had a problem swing there detectors so they never used them. I have 2 detectors now and both are rigged with a key ring for the hook up to the sling.

The only thing missing for the above pictures is large size key ring attached to the base of hand grip area on the detector with 2 wire ties. You should be able to take all or most of the weight from the 1270.

Now I no longer have a 1270 so I am going from memory.

This is the way I thought of the normal disc and the iron disc.

If you notice the normal disc has has a iron disc area which only has small area that deals with iron maybe a couple of numbers and then you are getting into foil and on up the scale.

Now if you select Iron disc it is nothing more than that small area on normal disc expanded to a full range of that iron control. So you can fine tune and disc out say some type of nail that is giving you a problem in the area you are hunting. I am a coin hunter so if I was running iron disc I would run it at max. Now if I remember right I could toggle out of iron disc into normal disc and see how high up the scale a target would come in or go out.

Ron in WV

Worked and lived in the Huntington West Virginia area all my life, retired 2010
US Air Force Vietnam Veteran (68-69 & 70-71)
Started getting into metal detecting around 1975

I am running a F75Ltd, and a Tesoro Tejon. At one time I had about 6 detectors in my closet, but found that I didn't really hunt enough to support having that many detectors so one by one I sold them off. I am like a lot of guys always thinking if I just had one of those, I could find some better stuff. As for the 1270 I had 3 of them but not all at the same time, bottom line it was one of my better silver machines.

One the ways I would run the 1270 was what I called silver blasting. I would set the normal disc close to max and test it on a clad dime from my pocket on top of the ground, then set the sensitivity to max. That 1270 would chatter so bad you would think you couldn't hunt with it at all, but when you went over a good target it would go quite and give you what I call a normal audio response to the good target.

The little 3.75" coil was my favorite coil, but not all the 3.75" coils will run on the 1270. If you go looking for one it must have the thicker cable, I found that out the hard way. In fact none of the coils with the skinny cables will work on the 1270, I bought a couple of old 1265x box coils thinking they wouldn't hang on the grass as bad as the spider coils. They didn't work, they would detect a target but only an inch or 2 from the coil.

Good luck and HH,

Ron in WV

Worked and lived in the Huntington West Virginia area all my life, retired 2010
US Air Force Vietnam Veteran (68-69 & 70-71)
Started getting into metal detecting around 1975

Ron is right about the coil and their cables.
The coils for the per 1266 machines used a skinny gray cable and they also has a much smaller mounting screw hole (they actually used a brass machine screw). Its these coils that are basically not usable on the 1270.

Now the funny thing is that the 1266 can use either the 1270 or the 1265 coils, and the 1270 and the 1266 can interchange coils as long as the coil has the heavier black cable.
And to fit the older 1265 coils on the 1266 lower stem you do have to drill the mounting hole some to oversize it.

You can try out the iron disc or any disc on any machine for that matter, by air-testing some samples or placing a row of them spaced apart on the ground. Sweep them by the coil in the air or swing the coil over them on the ground one by one. Advance the disc till the signal stops. Now try a larger iron sample or different test target, and so on. Of course, be sure to try some samples of good targets to make sure you're not losing them by setting disc too high.

Do that any time before you hunt and you'll have a better idea of what to expect in the field. When you're out detecting, you can do the same thing, with the actual junk and good objects you're finding at that specific site. I always bring a few samples with me to test with in case I don't happen to find anything, so I can at least verify the detector is working.

Thanks, Mark. Interesting! I happen to have the old 1260 X which was my very first machine acquired back in '94. It came with the 8" and 3.75" coils. I recently picked up a used 11" coil also with the skinny grey cord. I'm wondering if these box coils, as you call them, would work on my 1225X. Would you know? Regards. Duck!